The background: Kiran Leonard is a singer-songwriter from near Manchester, but another kid busker with a soulful voice he ain’t. Record companies searching for the next Ed Sheeran can probably look away now (he’s not even the next Ed Harcourt, although that’s a lot closer). One of the tracks on his album, Bowler Hat Soup – which isn’t even his debut, despite the fact he’s only 17 – sounds like a hardcore band playing a show tune. Others remind us of Ariel Pink in a tussle with Aphex Twin, and Van Dyke Parks if he were remaking Song Cycle less as a tumble of musicals and Americana and more as a jumble of music hall and Monty Python.

Needless to say, Leonard is more Frank Zappa than Frank Turner. Bowler Hat Soup includes 16 tracks and features Leonard playing everything bar a swordfish trombone, from the usual piano and guitar to a grill. There are as many ideas as there are instruments (22 at last count, give or take a cajón and a mandolin). Hell, his press release contains more ideas than most records by people twice his age. He describes his album as “a hexadecagonal pseudo-fortress of occasionally caustic and semi-illiterate pop nonsense” and, employing a decidedly regal third-person, “suspects the whole thing is a little schizophrenic and relentless” while tacitly acknowledging the benefits of such qualities. He is “a firm believer in the exponential curve that connects the power and excellence of a show with its number of drummers” and “claims his music is capable of causing uncontrollable bouts of hysteria”.

We’re not laughing, we’re gawping. At this boy – signed to producer Paul Epworth’s sister Mary’s label – who knows how to spell Nietzsche and leitmotif, and who, not surprisingly, has been described by sources we trust as “freakishly savantish”. His music, as we say, moves rapidly between prog-pop, scuzz-rock and a dozen other places, some of which have no name. From the baroque tumult that is opener Dear Lincoln to the closing track, A Purpose, performed on an 1898 American reed organ, there is no let-up. It is psych-cabaret one minute, avant-chamber pop the next. There are handclaps and harmoniums, and an agglomeration of non-rock styles that posit Leonard as a sort of teenage Brit Van Dyke. There’s No Future in Us is a mad Ariel Pink hurtle wherein Leonard’s voice is treated not so much to Auto-Tune as Manual Distort. Oakland Highball is metal vaudeville or acoustic thrash.

Apparently, his previous album opened with a 26-minute prog-jazz opus called the Big Fish. We’re actually scared to check it out. Before that, he made electronic music under the name Pend Oreille. Not for nothing have some suspected Leonard is some kind of brilliant hoaxer. Either way, you want to applaud him. “I have never attempted anything this complex or grandiose,” he says. He explains that lyrically he “began to semantically group certain themes – songs about my family and friends, of love and war, and also alcohol consumption” – as he progressed. He adds: “To have finally seen its completion is an overwhelming and wonderful feeling.” We can only imagine.

“In the Bandcamp introduction to “Dear Lincoln”, Kiran Leonard lays out some caveats for prospective listeners: “I was 14 and uneducated, hence my mispronunciation (and pretentious namedropping) of friedrich NEECHsher. i also fucked up lEETmotif. but as far as anyone is concerned, the mistakes are obviously ironic.” His insistence upon irony is the only faintly juvenile thing about this majestic, freakishly savant-ish song; Leonard is now 17, and resides in Oldham, near Manchester, and as a resident thereof, I feel entirely justified in telling you just how dull it is here. Conversely, “Dear Lincoln” is a wondrous, sub-two-minute blast of shambolic, lo-fi piano rambling and smashed cymbal fog that would have been entirely at home on Elephant 6 in its heyday, recalling early of Montreal, Elf Power– and a Joanna Newsom-like way with words and intonation rendered in the wiry voice of a manic teenage boy.

Leonard says the song’s about mental health and the concept of tabula rasa, though it’s hard to follow the lyrics without guidance– he sings as if playing the piano from Big, sprinting up and down the keys while yelping at least one word for every note. There’s so much raw, unadulterated delight here; the way he uses a single word as the join between bars, breaking it over his knee before scurrying into another mad verse, spewing lines like, “the walls of coffin beds begin to topple with flames, scream names,” in some nameless panic. It is without a doubt the most invigorating song I’ve heard all year. One more time: he wrote it when he was 14 years old.”

Stumbled across this amazing bit of seventies techno today, the ‘Godley Creme Gizmotron’. Designed by Kevin Godley and Lol Creme towards the end of their time in 10cc, it’s pretty much a ‘hurdy gurdy’ add on for electric guitar, consisting of a series of spinning rubber wheels that bow each string.

Here’s a news feature from 1977 detailing it’s development , followed by an excerpt from their ‘Consequences’ lp, that heavily featured the instrument.

Records we’ve made

Hand Of Glory Records, (the label of Mary Epworth and producer Will Twynham) asked twelve diverse artists for an original Christmas song. The results are tracks that sum up the many experiences of Christmas, from lush widescreen pop (The Webb Brothers), to sparkly saturnalian disco (Mary Epworth) to dystopian Fall-esque horror (Extradition Order). Standout tracks [...]